Csuri is recognized by Smithsonian Magazine as "the father of digital art and computer animation" and by the Museum of Modern Art as a leading pioneer of computer animation.

This retrospective exhibition features over 75 works of art, including early analogue and plotter images, large-scale digital prints, 3D rendered images, interactive media, recent computer animations, and more.

Csuri founded the Computer Graphics Research Group, the Ohio Super Computer Graphics Project, and the Advanced Computing Center for Arts and Design, which is dedicated to the research and development of digital art and computer animation. He is also co-founder of Cranston/Csuri Productions, one of the world's first computer animation production companies.

In 1963 Csuri created an analogue computer, which he used to make transformations of a drawing. He used it to do a series of drawings based upon the paintings of several old masters, such as Paul Klee, Albrecht Durer, Jean Auguste Ingres, Pablo Picasso, Piet Mondrian, and others. Csuri had been exploring the concept of transforming drawings in his paintings from 1960-63, prior to working with the computer. The computer allowed him to manipulate images in ways that were not possible before.

Charles A. CsuriCosmic Matter, 1989
Cibachrome

Csuri used a fragmentation function to break the figure into pieces. The computer program had the ability to make clusters of fragments, control their range of displacement, and rotate them. Csuri began by making a painting of just stripes. The painting was scanned and then mapped onto the 3D models. The elements were fragmented, shifted, and rotated many times to create the piece.

Charles A. CsuritexturePerhaps, 2002
Color ink on canvas

texturePerhaps is part of Csuri's Scribble Series. The works in this series are influenced by Csuri's love for the sketches and drawings by the old masters, and inspired by the drawings of his granddaughter in her pre-schematic phase, when images reflect no clear subject. Unlike a two-dimensional drawing, Csuri's ribbon-like structure reflects light based upon the angular relationship to the light sources. The image is a form of graffiti; meaningless marks or some private code. The Scribble Series is created using the "ribbon function," written for Csuri by Dr. Steve May of Pixar.

Charles A. CsuriA Shift in Time and Space, 2006
Color ink on paper

This work is part of an Infinity Series and explores Csuri's interest in the relationship between the picture plane and one-point perspective. The image contains more than 30,000 objects, all of which are viewed from a fixed camera position in 3D space. Unlike most pictures, the closer one moves into the scene, the greater the sense of space and light.